Don’t “Get Over” Your Problems, Face Them

Have you ever noticed when people don’t want to deal with a problem they try to ignore it like it isn’t there or act like it’s not affecting them? Maybe people have experienced a trauma they aren’t proud of so they act like everything is ok. When you ask them about it they say things like, “I’m fine,” or, “I’m over it.” But are they really fine or over it as they say?

Trauma affects people in different ways and we all process it differently. Depending on the trauma, it can have a lingering effect that creates toxic behaviors or long lasting emotional issues. I once had a friend who lost her aunt and had to watched her real estate business in another state fall apart because she had to pay for the funeral. After she told me that (crying in tears mind you) she said, “whatever, I’m over it.” Yet, I clearly knew she wasn’t and it still bothered her. There are many other situations I and others have been in where this kind of response was given and we knew it wasn’t genuine. Why are people so afraid to tell us the truth?

Disconnect From Emotions And Responsibility

Let me say this… I absolutely dislike the phrase “I’m over it.” It is a blatant lie and everyone knows it! Whenever I hear that, I know there’s something that person refuses to accept. There are emotions someone doesn’t want to be responsible for. Saying phrases like this is a form of denial. Denying yourself the opportunity to be true to yourself and express how you feel. This is dangerous for everyone, mainly the person doing it.

Unfortunately in our society, emotions are looked at as a sign of weakness. Because of this, people stuff them down so they don’t look weak or soft (men know all about this one). What must be understood is that emotions are completely normal. Yes, they are normal! Our emotions are our internal guidance system and directly contribute to things like our intuition. When we’re in touch with them, we can have a healthy relationship with our mental and emotional health. What happens when we stuff our emotions down? We develop psychosomatic issues, with the most common being digestive issues.

So, why am I talking about emotions? Because it’s what you’re running from when you choose to say you’re fine or over it. This is what people do when they don’t want to be responsible for how they feel but the lack of accepting responsibility is actually creating more negative emotions.

Getting Over Your Problems Doesn’t Work

One question I have when people say that is, “what are you trying to get over?” Another way of putting it is, “what don’t you want to face?” I’ve had people who were upset at me but never told me why and said they were over it and it bothered me. What is it don’t you want to face? Are you afraid you’ll create tension in our friendship? This is actually a defense tactic that people use so they don’t have to look at their issues. But no matter how much they try to avoid them, they will always be there. At some point, there has to be a conscious decision to face your problems.

You may heard the saying, “what you resist, will persist.” There’s been another saying that has gone viral recently that says, “If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.” The more you push back your problems, the harder they come back at you. Even worse, unresolved issues will begin to spill over onto people who had nothing to do with your problems to begin with and sadly, they become collateral damage. This can lead to a loss of friendships, relationships, opportunities, and many more, leading to even more trauma. This is ultimately what happens when you try to get over your problems instead of facing them; the addition of more trauma.

Beginning to Face Your Problems

Facing your problems goes back to accepting responsibility for your emotions. One of the main reasons people don’t heal is because they don’t want to face the emotions from their traumas, however, the only way to heal the trauma is to stand face-to-face with your emotions. Own them and take responsibility for how you feel. Then, instead of asking how you can get over your trauma, you can ask different questions:

– What’s going on?– How does this make me feel?– What triggers me when ‘X’ happens?– When did that first start and what was going on?

Asking better questions allows you to go deeper within the problem to help you resolve it. By getting to the root cause of the problem, you actually have a clear definition of the trauma and now you can work at healing from it and resolving that trauma.

Healing from trauma takes time. Everyone is different so there’s no exact timeline for a healing. What is clear is that it takes work. There is no getting over problems but with facing them, you can begin to break the cycle of trauma induced patterns, allowing you to live a life you enjoy, without having to disguise how you’re really feeling. To me, that makes doing the work worth it.